How to Handle Contacts

Your business depends on a database of contacts. On HubSpot, a contacts database is the key component to all the other features of your account. This database will record information about the various people involved in your business interactions. Each interaction is individualized so that you know the status of the relationship. Most importantly, it will help you attract contacts which are similar too.

It doesn’t matter if your database has 1,000 contacts or 10,000 contacts. You must learn the right way to think when it comes to contacts.

Your sales strategy and marketing strategy have the same objective. You want to turn prospective customers into actual paying customers. Contacts can help you achieve this in both cases. It is all associated with Inbound Methodology.

How many contacts currently exist in your database? Do you know any of these contacts on a personal level? Remember that contacts should be thought of as more than just names and email addresses. They are real people who you are establishing a connection with. Consider this the next time you talk about contacts with your sales team.

The Definition of a Contact

First, you need to understand the definition of a contact. When you see the word “contact,” this could refer to any person that your organization sells to, markets to, engages with, employs, or partners up with.

When your contacts database has your marketing and sales contacts, it helps to align all the areas of your inbound strategy which have had interactions between them and your contacts. But there is always room to improve this alignment between your sales team and marketing team.

How to Implement This Model

Here are three ways to get started with this alignment process:

1) Keep your contacts database updated and clean. Get your sales team and marketing team to help with this.

2) Develop filters and segmented lists.

3) Manage the stages of the lifecycle to make sure there is consistency.

Keep all contacts organized

You must always maintain a clean database throughout all the steps. CRM – MUST have tool to store all the contacts you’ve found. Within 12 months, up to 30% of your contacts database will have outdated or unusable data. That is why you need to frequently delete and update information in the database to ensure all the information remains accurate.

For optimizing those processes major of salespeople prefer automation sales tools. Now they are represented by a number of chatbots. Closer bot presents chat interface for managing CRM. You don’t have to log in every single time to the system to update a deal – bot does it by typing a slash command.

As you regularly update your database, you will want your contacts to be segmented. For example, if you have contacts that are interested in blogging work, start creating segmented lists using this data. By doing this, you can group similar types of contacts together into the same lists. Your sales teams and marketing teams will have an easier time taking action if they can see these lists.

Here is another segmented list example:

Suppose if all your emails were only sent to people from your segmented lists in an effort to get the appropriate content to those who are interested in it. You would see the rate of open emails go through the roof.

If you want to begin with the filters and segmented lists, you need to manage the lifecycle stages. To use these stages appropriately and consistently, your teams must talk about the definitions of the stages. Remember that every lifecycle stage is basically a funnel transition. Your teams might give varying definitions to the different stages of the lifecycle. But to make sure that you are properly using each stage, the definition of them must be discussed throughout the organization.

Execution Time

The contacts tool in HubSpot does not let you integrate or synchronize the marketing contacts and sales contacts. There is just a single database which gives value to your whole team because they can spot the strongest contact relationships with it. If all your teams in the company can see these contacts, they will be able to develop the best strategies for doing their own jobs well for the organization.

A lot of work goes into keeping a contacts database updated, maintained, and aligned throughout the organization. Therefore, keep your database very clean and develop your filters and segmented lists. And, of course, talk about the lifecycle stages with your teams to make sure there is consistency there. Both the marketing teams and sales teams will be able to view this same information.